The law should abandon its useless and even harmful chicanery concerning the questions of sexual relations and love, and regulate more carefully the duties of parents toward their children, and thus protect future generations against the abuses of the present generation. P. 377.
It is important to bear in mind that modern legislation on marriage often favors the reproduction of criminals, lunatics and invalids, while it hinders the production of healthy children by men who are intelligent, honest and robust. When an abnormal, unhealthy man is married his wife is obliged to submit to the conception of tainted children. What we require is more personal liberty for healthy, adaptable individuals and more restrictions for the abnormal, unhealthy and dangerous. The civil law of the future will have to take these facts into consideration if it wishes to keep level with scientific progress. P. 393.
THE DISEASES OF SOCIETY AND DEGENERACY. THE VICE AND CRIME PROBLEM. G. F. Lydston, M.D., Professor of Genito-Urinary Surgery, State University of Illinois. Prof. of Criminal Anthropology, Chicago, Kent College of Law; Member of the American Medical Association, etc., etc. The Riverton Press, Chicago, 1912.
The responsibility of rearing a large number of useful and upright citizens is a little too great for the poor family drudge who manipulates the wash board with one hand, holding a squealing baby with the other, and simultaneously attempts to keep in control a dozen other demonstrative and lusty children. She has a difficult task before her, even where her environment is favorable to the rearing of children, but where the children are brought into contact with evil associates as they are very likely to be when parental control is so lax as it necessarily is under such circumstances, they are not likely to become either ornamental or useful factors in our social system. If more attention were paid to quality of both parentage and children, and less fretting done as to the possible disasters to the nation incidental to small numbers of children, it would be better for the race. At the present day, when practically no attention is paid to stirpiculture in the human species, it seems absurd to worry about diminution in size of the American family. Is the function of the wife altogether that of a breeding machine? Has she no personal rights? Should she be sacrificed to posterity? Is it always her duty to rear a large family? Unhesitatingly I answer no to each question. The perpetuation of the race depends upon matrimony, it is true. It is not however woman’s function merely to increase numbers at the expense of her own life and comfort. This is a fallacy and an injustice to womanhood, and should be contradicted from the house-tops. The woman who is merely a beast of burden, a breeder of children, is a failure in modern life. Quality of progeny is not conserved along such lines, and quality, not quantity, makes for the elevation of the human race. Woman should not be sacrificed to posterity. Something is due her as a social integer. She is entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. She, as well as man, comes within the provisions of the constitution. Better a single child properly reared by a happy contented mother than a dozen ill-fed, unkempt, dirty, vicious and half-baked hoodlums. “Multiply and replenish the earth” was once sound doctrine, but it does not uniformly fit modern conditions. The scriptural injunction should be qualified. The multiplication should not extend beyond the parents capacity to comfortably rear and educate their children, nor beyond the number consistent with the preservation of the mother’s health and happiness.
CHAPTER II.
ORIGIN AND PRACTICE OF BIRTH CONTROL IN VARIOUS COUNTRIES
In the countries covered by this chapter Birth Control has been recognised as a legitimate science; leagues advocating the prevention of conception have been formed; and the leading authorities have approved the practice as being the foundation of a better social structure.
THE CONTROL OF BIRTHS. MARY ALDEN HOPKINS. Harper’s Weekly, April 10th, 1915.
The European laws on this subject are in striking contrast to ours. They treat contraception and abortion as two separate matters. The laws against abortion are strict. The laws concerning contraception are directed against distasteful advertising but not against private advice or public propaganda. In England the applicant must state in writing over his or her signature that he or she is married or about to be married. In Holland formulas and methods may be supplied privately, but must not be publicly advertised. In Germany there is no law on the matter, but sentiment is strongly opposed to advertising. In Switzerland it is forbidden to advertise or circularize. In Norway and Sweden advertising is not expected. Italy and France have no law on the subject. In Russia advertising in the newspapers is common. Everywhere in Europe contraceptives are for sale at pharmacies.
The Birth Control Movement is antagonistic to the general practice of abortion. The Hungarian senate, a few years ago, declared that the limitation of families by prevention of conception was absolutely necessary in order to check the wide-spread evil of attempted abortion.
Our present laws confuse the issue by classing—in a shockingly ignorant fashion,—contraception, abortion, and pornography, in the same category. The group is treated in the New York State Penal Code under the astonishing title of “Indecent Articles.” The eye of the law distinguishes no difference between the books of August Forel, a scientist revered in laboratories all over the world, and the obscene penny postcard sold by some slinking vendor.